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This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the same Maple Leaf team we saw before the league shut down to let 150 players head to Mother Russia and another 550 fly off to dip their toes in the ocean somewhere.

Let’s be clear. Every team had to deal with the same conditions. Some teams had more players go to Sochi than did the Leafs, and some lost key athletes to serious injury while they were competing for an Olympic medal.

Still, even playing field aside, this isn’t the same Leaf team that won 11 of 14 before the break.

Maybe the difference is slight. Slight enough, you might say, to produce three one-goal defeats in the three post-Sochi matches in which Toronto has competed so far.

In the NHL these days, a slight dip can make a major difference because games are so tight and goals are so scarce. So the sizeable bulge the Leafs had over the non-playoff teams in the Eastern Conference prior to the Winter Olympics is quickly disappearing.

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A 2-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night — the third defeat for the Leafs at the hands of the Jackets this season — allowed Columbus to pull within five points of Toronto, and with two games in hand.

This defeat was in regulation, so no bonus points for the Leafs like the ones they picked up on the road in overtime losses to Long Island and Montreal last week. The loss to the Islanders was about sloppiness, the one to the Habs was about late penalties and this one to Columbus, well, this was about a second-period stall and a Blue Jackets team that had more urgency and structure in its game.

So what happened to the Leafs over the break? Three players — Phil Kessel, James van Riemsdyk and Nik Kulemin — went to Sochi, and they’ve all come back looking pretty energetic.

It’s the rest, those who took a small vacation then tried to get back into game condition with a mini-camp starting Feb. 19, that don’t seem to be nearly as confident or sharp.

“When you’re as hot as we were, you definitely don’t want time off,” said Nazem Kadri. “You can’t simulate games in practice.”

It’s easy to criticize NHL players for losing the quality in their performance over a three-week vacation. Working folks would gladly tell you they’d train hard every day to earn those kinds of dollars.

But the reality is that there is a rhythm to an athlete’s life, and a long break in the middle of a season disrupts that rhythm. Some teams — Buffalo and Minnesota, for example — have handled it well. Others, like the Leafs and Carolina, just haven’t.

“Any time you’re off the ice for that long, it takes ice to get it back,” said defenceman Cody Franson wryly. “In Montreal on the weekend, I felt better than I had all season. But you can practise as much as you want. It’s still not the same as games.”

To be fair, the Leafs could have won against the Islanders and Canadiens, and with some puck luck might have gotten the jump on the Blue Jackets Monday night as well. But they didn’t in all three cases, and now this group of 22 players, plus the injured David Bolland, has to sweat through the next two days until Wednesday’s trade deadline.

“It’s not a lot of fun being a player at this time of year,” said head coach Randy Carlyle, who was himself dealt at the deadline 30 years ago. “With Twitter and everything, there’s a lot more rumours floating around. There’s a lot more to it than there was in ’84. I don’t think there was Twitter back then, was there?”

Frazer McLaren went on waivers on Monday, and would clear by noon on Tuesday, a move designed to give the Leafs roster flexibility. Bolland may or may not be back Wednesday night, and because he is unsigned and headed for free agency, there’s even a chance GM Dave Nonis could deal him before the deadline.

Right now, Nonis’s team looks like it could use help in a number of areas. They had some wobbly moments on the blue line against Columbus, got slaughtered in the faceoff circle (22 wins, 32 losses) and could only produce one goal by Mason Raymond, another night when nothing from the top line featuring Kessel meant defeat.

Columbus, meanwhile, according to a Vancouver Province report late Monday night, was trying to make a bid for Canucks centre Ryan Kesler, but Kesler said he would not waive his no-trade clause to be dealt to the Blue Jackets. GM Jarmo Kekalainen is trying to improve his roster without dealing his key youngsters or the three first-rounders he drafted last summer.

The Jackets may also be trying to off-load $7.5-million winger Marian Gaborik as a deadline rental.

So everybody’s got problems, right? And everybody had to find a way to deal with the challenges of the Olympic break.

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